No More Learning

SO
When the Parliament had met, Pym was the first to rise.
We know his appearance from his portrait: a portly form, which
a court waiting-woman called that of an OX; a forehead
high that lampooners compared it to a shuttle; the dress of a
gentleman of the time,- for not to the cavaliers alone belonged
that picturesque costume and those pointed beards which fur-
nish the real explanation of the fact that all women are Tories.


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GOLDWIN SMITH
Into the expectant and wavering, though ardent, minds of the
inexperienced assembly he poured, with the authority of a veteran
chief, a speech which at once fixed their thoughts, and possessed
them with their mission. It was a broad, complete, and earnest,
though undeclamatory, statement of the abuses which they had
come to reform. For reform, though for root-and-branch reform,
not for revolution, the Short Parliament came; and Charles might
even now have made his peace with his people. But Charles did
not yet see the truth: the truth could never pierce through the
divinity that hedged round the king. The Commons insisted that
redress of grievances should go before supply. In a moment
of madness, or what is the same thing, of compliance with the
counsels of Laud, Charles dissolved the Parliament, imprisoned
several of its members, and published his reasons in a proclama-
tion full of despotic doctrine. The friends of the Crown were
sad, its enemies very joyful. Now, to the eye of history, begins
to rise that scaffold before Whitehall.
Once more Charles and Strafford tried their desperate arms
against the Scotch; and once more their soldiers refused to fight.
Pym and Hampden, meanwhile, sure of the issue, were preparing
their party and the nation for the decisive struggle. Their head-
quarters were at Pym's house, in Gray's Inn Lane; but meetings
were held also at the houses of leaders in the country, especially
for correspondence with the Scotch, with whom these patriot
traitors were undoubtedly in league. A private press was actively
at work. Pym was not only the orator of his party, but its soul
and centre; he knew how not only to propagate his opinions with
words of power, but to organize the means of victory. And now
Charles, in extremity, turned to the Middle Ages for one expedi-
ent more, and called a Great Council of Peers, according to Plan-
tagenet precedents, at York. Pym flew at once to York, caused
a petition for a Parliament to be signed by the peers of his party
there, and backed it with petitions from the people, one of them
signed by ten thousand citizens of London. This first great
wielder of public opinion in England was the inventor of organ-
ized agitation by petition. The King surrendered, and called a
Parliament. Pym and Hampden rode over the country, urging
the constituencies to do their duty. The constituencies did their
duty as perhaps they had never done it before and have never
done it since. They sent up the noblest body of men that
ever sat in the councils of a nation. The force of the agitation


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triumphed for the moment, as it did again in 1832, over all those
defects in the system of representation which prevail over the
public interest and the public sentiment in ordinary times. The
Long Parliament met, while round it the tide of national feeling
swelled and surged, the long-pent-up voices of national resent-
ment broke forth. It met not for reform, but for revolution.
The King did not ride to it in state: he slunk to it in his private
barge, like a vanquished and a doomed man.
Charles had called to him Strafford. The earl knew his dan-
ger; but the King had pledged to him the royal word that not a
hair of his head should be touched. He came foiled, broken by
disease, but still resolute; prepared to act on the aggressive, per-
haps to arraign the leaders of the Commons for treasonable cor-
respondence with the Scotch. But he had to deal, in his friend
and coadjutor of former days, with no mere rhetorician, but with
a man of action as sagacious and as intrepid as himself. Pym
at once struck a blow which proved him a master of revolution.
Announcing to the Commons that he had weighty matter to
impart, he moved that the doors should be closed.
When they
were opened he carried up to the Lords the impeachment of the
Earl of Strafford. The earl came down to the House of Lords
that day with his brow of imperial gloom, his impetuous step,
his tones and gestures of command: but scarcely had he entered
the House when he found that power had departed from him;
and the terrible grand vizier of government by prerogative went
away a fallen man, none unbonneting to him in whose presence
an hour before no man would have stood covered. The speech
by which Pym swept the House on to this bold move, so that, as
Clarendon says, "not one man was found to stop the torrent," is
known only from Clarendon's outline. But that outline shows
how the speaker filled the thoughts of his hearers with a picture
of the tyranny, before he named its chief author, the Earl of
Strafford; and how he blended with the elements of indignation
some lighter passages of the earl's vanity and amours, to mingle
indignation with contempt and to banish fear.
Through the report of the Scotch Commissioner Baillie, we
see the great trial, to which that of Warren Hastings was a par-
allel in splendor, but no parallel in interest: Westminster Hall
filled with the Peers-the Commons- the foreign nobility, come
to learn if they could a lesson in English politics-the ladies of
quality, whose hearts (and we can pardon them) were all with


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13546
GOLDWIN SMITH
the great criminal who made so gallant and skillful a fight for
life, and of whom it was said that like Ulysses he had not
beauty, but he had the eloquence which moved a goddess to love.
Among the mass of the audience the interest, intense at first,
flagged as the immense process went on; and eating, drinking,
loud talking, filled the intervals of the trial. But there was one
whose interest did not flag. The royal throne was set for the
King in his place; but the King was not there. He was with his
queen in a private gallery, the latticework of which, in his eager-
ness to hear, he broke through with his own hands. And there
he heard, among other things, these words of Pym: "If the his-
tories of Eastern countries be pursued, whose princes order their
affairs according to the mischievous principles of the Earl of
Strafford, loose and absolved from all rules of government, they
will be found to be frequent in combustions, full of massacres
and of the tragical ends of princes. "
I need not make selections from a speech so well known as
that of Pym on the trial of Strafford. But hear one or two
answers to fallacies which are not quite dead yet. To the charge
of arbitrary government in Ireland, Strafford had pleaded that
the Irish were a conquered nation. "They were a conquered
nation," cries Pym. "There cannot be a word more pregnant or
fruitful in treason than that word is. There are few nations
in the world that have not been conquered, and no doubt but
the conqueror may give what law he pleases to those that are
conquered; but if the succeeding pacts and agreements do not
limit and restrain that right, what people can be secure? Eng-
land hath been conquered, and Wales hath been conquered; and
by this reason will be in little better case than Ireland. If the
king by the right of a conqueror gives laws to his people, shall
not the people, by the same reason, be restored to the right of
the conquered to recover their liberty if they can? " Strafford
had alleged good intentions as an excuse for his evil counsels.
"Sometimes, my lords," says Pym, "good and evil, truth and
falsehood, lie so near together that they are hard to be dis-
tinguished. Matters hurtful and dangerous may be accompanied
with such circumstances as may make them appear useful and
convenient. But where the matters propounded are evil in their
own nature, such as the matters are wherewith the Earl of Straf-
ford is charged, as to break public faith and to subvert laws and
government, they can never be justified by any intentions, how


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13547
•
good soever they be pretended. " Again, to the plea that it was
a time of great danger and necessity, Pym replies:-"If there
were any necessity, it was of his own making: he, by his evil
counsel, had brought the King into a necessity; and by no rules
of justice can be allowed to gain this advantage by his own fault,
as to make that a ground of his justification which is a great
part of his offense. "
Once, we are told, while Pym was speaking, his eyes met
those of Strafford; and the speaker grew confused, lost the thread
of his discourse, broke down beneath the haggard glance of his
old friend. Let us never glorify revolution!
THE PURITAN COLONIES
From 'Lectures on the Study of History'
WITH
ITH popular government, the Puritans established popular
education. They are the great authors of the system of
common schools. They founded a college too, and that
in dangerous and pinching times. Nor did their care fail, nor
is it failing, to produce an intelligent people. A great literature
is a thing of slow growth everywhere. The growth of Ameri-
can literature was retarded at first by Puritan severity, which
forced even philosophy to put on a theological garb, and veiled ·
the Necessarianism of Mr. Mill in the Calvinism of Jonathan Ed-
wards. Now, perhaps, its growth is retarded by the sudden burst
of commercial activity and wealth, the development of which our
monopolies long restrained. One day, perhaps, this wealth may
be used as nobly as the wealth of Florence; but for some time
it will be spent in somewhat coarse pleasures by those who have
suddenly won it. It is spent in somewhat coarse pleasures by
those who have suddenly won it at Liverpool and Manchester,
as well as at New York. One praise, at any rate, American lit-
erature may claim: it is pure. Here the spirit of the Pilgrims
still holds its own. The public opinion of a free country is a
restraining as well as a moving power. On the other hand,
despotism, political or ecclesiastical, does not extinguish human
liberty. That it may take away the liberty of reason, it gives
the liberty of sense. It says to man, Do what you will, sin and
shrive yourself; but eschew political improvement, and turn away
your thoughts from truth.


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13548
GOLDWIN SMITH
The history of the Puritan Church in New England is one of
enduring glory, of transient shame. Of transient shame, because
there was a moment of intolerance and persecution; of enduring
glory, because intolerance and persecution instantly gave way
to perfect liberty of conscience and free allegiance to the truth.
The founders of New England were Independents. When they
went forth, their teacher had solemnly charged them to follow
him no farther than they had seen him follow his Master. He
had pointed to the warning example of churches which fancied
that because Calvin and Luther were great and shining lights
in their times, therefore there could be no light vouchsafed to
man after theirs. "I beseech you remember it: it is an article of
your Church covenant that you be ready to receive whatever
truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God. ”
It was natural that the Puritan settlement should at first be a
church rather than a State. To have given a share in its lands
or its political franchise to those who were not of its communion
would have been to make the receiver neither rich nor powerful,
and the giver, as he might well think, poor and weak indeed.
But the Communion grew into an Establishment; and the Puri-
tan Synod, as well as the Council of Trent, must needs forget
that it was the child of change, and build its barrier, though
not a very unyielding one, across the river which flows forever.
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, were partly seces-
sions from Massachusetts, led by those who longed for perfect
freedom; and in fairness to Massachusetts, it must be said that
among those seceders were some in whose eyes freedom herself
was scarcely free. The darkness of the Middle Ages must bear
the blame if not a few were dazzled by the sudden return of .
light. The name of Providence, the capital of Rhode Island,
is the thank-offering of Roger Williams, to whose wayward and
disputatious spirit much may be forgiven if he first clearly pro-
claimed, and first consistently practiced, the perfect doctrine of
liberty of conscience, the sole guarantee for real religion, the sole
trustworthy guardian of the truth. That four Quakers should
have suffered death in a colony founded by fugitives from perse-
cution, is a stain on the history of the free churches of America,
like the stain on the robe of Marcus Aurelius, like the stain on
the escutcheon of the Black Prince. It is true there was no In-
quisition, no searching of conscience; that the persecutors warned
their victims away, and sought to be quit of them, not to take


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GOLDWIN SMITH
13549
their blood; that the Quakers thrust themselves on their fate
in their frenzied desire for martyrdom. All this at most ren-
ders less deep by one degree the dye of religious murder. The
weapon was instantly wrested from the hand of fanaticism by the
humane instinct of a free people; and the blood of those four vic-
tims sated in the New World the demon who in the Old World,
between persecutions and religious wars, has drunk the blood of
millions, and is scarcely sated yet. If the robe of religion in the
New World was less rich than in the Old, it was all but pure of
those red stains, compared with which the stains upon the robe
of worldly ambition, scarlet though they be, are white as wool.
In the New World there was no Inquisition, no St. Bartholomew,
no Thirty Years' War; in the New World there was no Vol-
taire. If we would do Voltaire justice, criminal and fatal as his
destructive levity was, we have only to read his 'Cry of Inno-
cent Blood,' and we shall see that the thing he assailed was not
Christianity, much less God. The American sects, indeed, soon
added to the number of those variations of the Protestant churches,
which, contrasted with the majestic unity of Rome, furnished a
proud argument to Bossuet. Had Bossuet lived to see what
came forth at the Revolution from under the unity of the Church
of France, he might have doubted whether unity was so united;
as, on the other hand, if he had seen the practical union of the
free churches of America for the weightier matters of religion,
which Tocqueville observed, he might have doubted whether
variation was so various. It would have been too much to ask
a Bossuet to consider whether, looking to the general dealings of
Providence with man, the variations of free and conscientious
inquirers are an absolute proof that free and conscientious inquiry
is not the road to religious truth.
In Maryland, Roman Catholicism itself, having tasted of the
cup it had made others drink to the dregs, and being driven to
the asylum of oppressed consciences, proclaimed the principle of
toleration. In Maryland the Church of Alva and Torquemada
grew, bloodless and blameless; and thence it has gone forth, as
it was in its earlier and more apostolic hour, to minister to the
now large Roman Catholic population of the United States, what-
ever of good and true, in the great schism of humanity, may
have remained on the worse and falser side. For in Maryland
it had no overgrown wealth and power to defend against the
advance of truth. Bigotry, the mildest of all vices, has the worst


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GOLDWIN SMITH
13550
things laid to her charge. That wind of free discipline, which,
to use Bacon's image, winnows the chaff of error from the grain
of truth, is in itself welcome to man as the breeze of evening.
It is when it threatens to winnow away, not the chaff of error
alone, but princely bishoprics of Strasburg and Toledo, that its
breath becomes pestilence, and Christian love is compelled to
torture and burn the infected sheep in order to save from infec-
tion the imperiled flock.
There have been wild religious sects in America. But cannot
history show sects as wild in the Old World? Is not Mormonism
itself fed by the wild apocalyptic visions, and the dreams of a
kinder and happier social state, which haunt the peasantry in the
more neglected parts of our own country? Have not the wildest
and most fanatical sects in history arisen when the upper classes
have turned religion into policy, and left the lower classes, who
knew nothing of policy, to guide or misguide themselves into
the truth? New England was fast peopled by the flower of the
Puritan party, and the highest Puritan names were blended with
its history. Among its elective governors was Vane, even then
wayward as pure, even then suspected of being more republican
than Puritan. It saw also the darker presence of Hugh Peters.
While the day went hard with freedom and the Protestant cause
in England, the tide set steadily westward; it turned, when the
hour of retaliation came, to the great Armageddon of West-
minster and Naseby; after the Restoration it set to the West
again. In New England, Puritanism continued to reign with all
that was solemn, austere, strange in its spirit, manners, lan-
guage, garb, when in England its dominion, degenerating into
tyranny, had met with a half-merited overthrow. In New Eng-
land three of the judges of Charles I. found a safer refuge than
Holland could afford; and there one of them lived to see the
scales once more hung out in heaven, the better part of his own
cause triumphant once more, and William sit on the Protector's
throne.
Among the emigrants were clergymen, Oxford and Cambridge
scholars, high-born men and women; for in that moving age the
wealthiest often vied with the poorest in indifference to worldly
interest and devotion to a great cause. Even peers of the Puri-
tan party thought of becoming citizens of Massachusetts, but had
enough of the peer in them to desire still to have a hereditary
seat in the councils of the State. Massachusetts answered this


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13551
demand by the hand of one who had himself made a great sacri-
fice, and without republican bluster: "When God blesseth any
branch of any noble or generous family with a spirit and gifts fit
for government, it would be a taking of God's name in vain to
put such a talent under a bushel, and a sin against the honor
of magistracy to neglect such in our public elections. But if God
should not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit
for magistracy, we should enforce them rather to reproach and
prejudice than exalt them to honor, if we should call those forth
whom God doth not to public authority. " The Venetian seems
to be the only great aristocracy in history, the origin of which is
not traceable to the accident of conquest; and the origin even of
the Venetian aristocracy may perhaps be traced to the accident
of prior settlement and the contagious example of neighboring
States. That which has its origin in accident may prove useful
and live long; it may even survive itself under another name, as
the Roman patriciate, as the Norman nobility, survived themselves
under the form of a mixed aristocracy of birth, political influence,
and wealth. But it can flourish only in its native soil. Trans-
plant it, and it dies. The native soil of feudal aristocracy is a
feudal kingdom, with great estates held together by the law or
custom of primogeniture in succession to land. The New Eng-
land colonies rejected primogeniture with the other institutions
of the Middle Ages, and adopted the anti-feudal custom of equal
inheritance, under the legal and ancestral name of gavelkind. It
was Saxon England emerging from the Norman rule. This
rule of succession to property, and the equality with which it is
distributed, are the basis of the republican institutions of New
England. To transfer those institutions to countries where that
basis does not exist would be almost as absurd as to transfer
to modern society the Roman laws of the Twelve Tables or the
Capitularies of Charlemagne.
In New York, New Jersey, Delaware, settlements formed
by the energy of Dutch and Swedish Protestantism have been
absorbed by the greater energy of the Anglo-Saxons. The rising.
empire of his faith beyond the Atlantic did not fail to attract
the soaring imagination of Gustavus: it was in his thoughts when
he set out for Lützen. But the most remarkable of the Ameri-
can colonies, after the New England group, is Pennsylvania. We
are rather surprised, on looking at the portrait of the gentle and
eccentric founder of the Society of Friends, to see a very comely


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13552
GOLDWIN SMITH
youth dressed in complete armor. Penn was a highly educated
and accomplished gentleman; heir to a fine estate, and to all the
happiness and beauty, which he was not without a heart to feel,
of English manorial life. "You are an ingenious gentleman,"
said a magistrate before whom he was brought for his Quaker
extravagances: "why do you make yourself unhappy by associat-
ing with such a simple people? " In the Old World he could
only hope to found a society; in the New World he might hope
to found a nation, of which the law should be love. The Con-
stitution he framed for Philadelphia, on pure republican princi-
ples, was to be "for the support of power in reverence with the
people, and to secure the people from the abuse of power. For
liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without
liberty is slavery. " He excluded himself and his heirs from the
founder's bane of authority over his own creation. It is as a
reformer of criminal law, perhaps, that he has earned his bright-
est and most enduring fame. The codes and customs of feudal
Europe were lavish of servile or plebeian blood. In the repub-
lic of New England the life of every man was precious; and
the criminal law was far more humane than that of Europe -
though tainted with the dark Judaism of the Puritans, with the
cruel delusion which they shared with the rest of the world on
the subject of witchcraft, and with their overstrained severity in
punishing crimes of sense. Penn confined capital punishment
to the crimes of treason and murder. Two centuries afterward,
the arguments of Romilly and the legislation of Peel convinced
Penn's native country that these reveries of his, the dictates
of wisdom which sprang from his heart, were sober truth. We
are now beginning to see the reality of another of his dreams:
the dream of making the prison not a jail only, but a place
of reformation. Of the two errors in government, that of treat-
ing men like angels and that of treating them like beasts, he
did something to show that the one to which he leaned was the
less grave; for Philadelphia grew up like an olive-branch beneath
his fostering hand.
In the Carolinas, the old settlement of Coligny was repeopled
with English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Swiss; the motley elements
which will blend with Hollander and Swede to form in America
the most mixed, and on one theory the greatest of all races. The
philosophic hand of Locke attempted to create for this colony a
highly elaborate constitution, judged at the time a masterpiece of


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13553
political art. Georgia bears the name of the second king of that
line whose third king was to lose all. Its philanthropic founder,
Oglethorpe, struggled to exclude slavery; but an evil policy and
the neighborhood of the West Indies baffled his endeavors. Here
Wesley preached, here Whitfield; and Whitfield, too anxious to
avoid offense that he might be permitted to save souls, paid a
homage to the system of slavery, and made a sophistical apology
for it, which weigh heavily against the merits of a great apostle
of the poor.
For some time all the colonies, whatever their nominal gov-
ernment,—whether they were under the Crown, under single
proprietors, under companies, or under free charters,-enjoyed,
in spite of chronic negotiation and litigation with the powers in
England, a large measure of practical independence. James I.
was weak; Charles I. and Laud had soon other things to think
of; the Long Parliament were disposed to be arrogant, but the
Protector was magnanimous; and finally, Charles II. , careless
of everything on this side the water, was still more careless of
everything on that side, and Clarendon was not too stiff for pre-
rogative to give a liberal charter to a colony of which he was
himself a patentee. Royal governors, indeed, sometimes tried to
overact the King, and the folly of Sir William Berkeley, governor
of Virginia, all but forestalled and well would it have been if
it had quite forestalled - the folly of Lord North. With this
exception, the colonies rested content and proud beneath the
shadow of England, and no thought of a general confederation
or absolute independence ever entered into their minds.
As they grew rich, we tried to interfere with their manu-
factures and monopolize their trade. It was unjust and it was
foolish. The proof of its folly is the noble trade that has sprung
up between us since our government lost all power of checking
the course of nature. But this was the injustice and the folly
of the time. No such excuse can be made for the attempt to tax
the colonies in defiance of the first principles of English gov-
ernment begun by narrow-minded incompetence and continued
by insensate pride. It is miserable to see what true affection
was there flung away. Persecuted and excited, the founders of
New England, says one of their historians, did not cry Fare-
well Rome, Farewell Babylon! They cried, Farewell dear Eng-
land! And this was their spirit even far into the fatal quarrel.
"You have been told," they said to the British Parliament, after
the subversion of the chartered liberties of Massachusetts, "you
XXIII-848
-


## p. 13554 (#368) ##########################################

13554
GOLDWIN SMITH
•
have been told that we are seditious, impatient of government,
and desirous of independence. Be assured that these are not
facts, but calumnies. Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and
we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory
and our greatest happiness; we shall ever be ready to contrib
ute all in our power to the welfare of the whole empire; we shall
consider your enemies as our enemies, and your interest as our
own. But if you are determined that your ministers shall wan-
tonly sport with the rights of mankind; if neither the voice of
justice, the dictates of law, the principles of the Constitution, nor
the suggestions of humanity, can restrain your hands from shed-
ding human blood in such an impious cause,- we must then
tell you that we will never submit to be 'hewers of wood and
drawers of water' for any nation in the world. " What was
this but the voice of those who framed the Petition of Right
and the Great Charter? Franklin alone, perhaps, of the leading
Americans, by the dishonorable publication of an exasperating
correspondence which he had improperly obtained, shared with
Grenville, Townshend, and Lord North, the guilt of bringing this
great disaster on the English race.
There could be but one issue to a war in which England was
fighting against her better self; or rather, in which England
fought on one side and a corrupt ministry and Parliament on the
other. The Parliament of that day was not national; and though
the nation was excited by the war when once commenced, it by
no means follows that a national Parliament would have com-
menced it. The great national leader rejoiced that the Americans
had resisted. But disease, or that worse enemy which hovers
so close to genius, deprived us of Chatham at the most critical
hour.
One thing there was in that civil war on which both sides
may look back with pride. In spite of deep provocation and
intense bitterness, in spite of the unwarrantable employment of
foreign troops and the infamous employment of Indians on our
side, and the exasperating interference of the French on the
side of the Americans, the struggle was conducted on the whole
with great humanity. Compared with the French Revolution,
it was
a contest between men with noble natures and a fight
between infuriated beasts. Something, too, it is that from that
struggle should have arisen the character of Washington, to
teach all ages, and especially those which are inclined to worship
violence, the greatness of moderation and civil duty. It has


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GOLDWIN SMITH
13555
been truly said that there is one spectacle more grateful to
Heaven than a good man in adversity,—a good man successful in
a great cause. Deeper happiness cannot be conceived than that
of the years which Washington passed at Mount Vernon, looking
back upon the life of arduous command held without a selfish
thought, and laid down without a stain.
The loss of the American colonies was perhaps, in itself, a
gain to both countries. It was a gain, as it emancipated com-
merce, and gave free course to those reciprocal streams of
wealth which a restrictive policy had forbidden to flow.
It was
a gain, as it put an end to an obsolete tutelage, which tended to
prevent America betimes to walk alone, while it gave England
only the puerile and somewhat dangerous pleasure of reigning
over those whom she did not and could not govern, but whom she
was tempted to harass and insult. A source of military strength
colonies can hardly be. You prevent them from forming proper
military establishments of their own, and you drag them into
your quarrels at the price of undertaking their defense. The
inauguration of free trade was in fact the renunciation of the
only solid object for which our ancestors clung to an invidious
and perilous supremacy, and exposed the heart of England by
scattering her fleets and armies over the globe.
It was not the
loss of the colonies, but the quarrel, that was one of the great-
est-perhaps the greatest disaster that ever befell the English
race. Who would not give up Blenheim and Waterloo if only
the two Englands could have parted from each other in kindness
and in peace; if our statesmen could have had the wisdom to
say to the Americans generously and at the right season, "You
are Englishmen like ourselves: be, for your own happiness and
our honor, like ourselves, a nation"? But English statesmen, with
all their greatness, have seldom known how to anticipate neces-
sity; too often the sentence of history on their policy has been
that it was wise, just, and generous, but "too late. " Too often
have they waited for the teaching of disaster. Time will heal
this, like other wounds. In signing away his own empire over
America, George III. did not sign away the empire of English
liberty, of English law, of English literature, of English religion,
of English blood, or of the English tongue. But though the
wound will heal,-and that it may heal, ought to be the earnest.
desire of the whole English name,—history can never cancel the
fatal page which robs England of half the glory and half the
happiness of being the mother of a great nation.


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13556
SYDNEY SMITH
SYDNEY SMITH
(1771-1845)
YDNEY SMITH'S reputation as an English wit is solid,—if that
word can be applied to so volatile a quality. But wit that
endures generally implies other characteristics behind it;
and Sydney Smith is no exception. He was a man of great intellect;
an advanced thinker on politics, philosophy, and religion, and one of
the most potent and salutary influences of his day in England. His
brilliant social traits should not obscure this fact. Naturally, how-
ever, it is the sparkling bon-mot that is easiest remembered. He had
the art, as had few men of his time, of
saying a deep or pregnant thing in a light
way.
He was the son of an English country
gentleman of marked eccentricity of charac-
ter, and was born at Woodford, Essex, June
3d, 1771.
He went to Winchester school;
then to Oxford, where he was a Fellow in
1792. A brief residence in Normandy gave
him a command of the French language.
His subsequent career was that of a tal-
ented and ambitious cleric in the Church
of England. It is significant that the bar,
not the pulpit, was his choice for a pro-
fession: it is easy to see that he would
have been successful in the former calling. In 1794 he became
curate of a remote parish on Salisbury Plains; and in 1796 went
to Edinburgh, where he officiated for five years at an Episcopal
chapel. It was during this Edinburgh residence that he formed
the intimacy with Brougham, Jeffrey, and other clever young liter-
ary men, which resulted in 1802 in the foundation of the Edin-
burgh Review, with Sydney Smith as chief editor. He contributed
seven articles to the first number, and kept up his connection
with the magazine as a contributor for a quarter of a century. The
position taken by this famous review was largely due to the impress
given to it by Sydney Smith. From Edinburgh he went to Lon-
don, and was a popular preacher there until 1806, when he was given
the Yorkshire living of Foston-le-Clay; in 1809 he received that of



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SYDNEY SMITH
13557
Heslington near York, where he remained until 1828. It was char-
acteristic of the man that he proved a faithful, hard-working coun-
try parson. In this year he received the appointment of canon of
Bristol, from which he was transferred to London, as resident canon
of St. Paul's, living in the capital for the rest of his days, and dying
there on February 22d, 1845. It has always been believed that had
he not been throughout a consistent and sturdy Whig, and hence
on the unpopular side, he would have died a bishop. For a dozen
years or more, in London, he was not only an intellectual force
but a social light, famous for his good-fellowship, a persona grata in
drawing-rooms. His fund of animal spirits was unfailing. The con-
junction of such intellectual powers with social gifts and graces is
rare indeed. Yet physically, he was bulky and ungraceful, his face
heavy and plain; and he was by no means a ladies' man in the usual
sense of that term.
The first characteristic publication of Sydney Smith was the 'Let-
ters on the Subject of the Catholics: To my Brother Abraham, who
Lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley' (1807-8); it was issued
anonymously, and had a decided influence in securing Roman Catho-
lic emancipation. The lectures on moral philosophy — delivered at
London, and attracting large and fashionable audiences in spite of the
abstruse nature of the subject — were not published till 1849, Jeffrey
being the editor. Sydney Smith's other published writings embraced
sermons, occasional discourses, and essays on political and social
themes. In 1856 appeared 'The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith,'
with a biography and notes by E. A. Duyckinck. The memoir by
his daughter, Lady Holland, gives an idea of his trenchant table-talk;
and valuable material is contained in Stuart J. Reid's 'Life and
Times of Sydney Smith' (1884). Any one who takes the trouble to
read Sydney Smith's serious writings will see plainly that his wit
and satire were but light-arm weapons used for serious purposes and
in noble and enlightened causes. Macaulay remarked that he was
the greatest master of ridicule in England since Swift. Doubtless
this is true. But equally true is Sir Henry Holland's claim that "if
he had not been the greatest and most brilliant of wits, he would have
been the most remarkable man of his time for a sound and vigorous
understanding and great reasoning powers; and if he had not been
distinguished for these, he would have been the most eminent and
the purest writer of English. "


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13558
SYDNEY SMITH
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN
GREAT deal has been said of the original difference of ca-
A pacity between men and women; as if women were more
quick, and men more judicious,—as if women were more
remarkable for delicacy of association, and men for stronger pow-
ers of attention. All this, we confess, appears to us very fanci-
ful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the men
and the women we every day meet with, everybody, we sup-
pose, must perceive; but there is none surely which may not be
accounted for by the difference of circumstances in which they
have been placed, without referring to any conjectural difference
of original conformation of mind. As long as boys and girls
run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both
precisely alike. If you catch up one-half of these creatures, and
train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the
other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understand-
ings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called
this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go
into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to explain
so very simple a phenomenon.
There is in either sex a strong and permanent disposition to
appear agreeable to the other; and this is the fair answer to
those who are fond of supposing that a higher degree of knowl-
edge would make women rather the rivals than the companions
of men. Presupposing such a desire to please, it seems much
more probable that a common pursuit should be a fresh source
of interest than a cause of contention. Indeed, to suppose that
any mode of education can create a general jealousy and rivalry
between the sexes, is so very ridiculous that it requires only to
be stated in order to be refuted. The same desire of pleasing
secures all that delicacy and reserve which are of such inestima-
ble value to women. We are quite astonished, in hearing men
converse on such subjects, to find them attributing such beau-
tiful effects to ignorance. It would appear, from the tenor of
such objections, that ignorance had been the great civilizer of the
world. Women are delicate and refined, only because they are
ignorant; they manage their household, only because they are
ignorant; they attend to their children, only because they know
no better. Now, we must really confess we have all our lives
been so ignorant as not to know the value of ignorance. We


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SYDNEY SMITH
13559
have always attributed the modesty and the refined manners of
women to their being well taught in moral and religious duty; to
the hazardous situation in which they are placed; to that perpetual
vigilance which it is their duty to exercise over thought, word,
and action; and to that cultivation of the mild virtues, which
those who cultivate the stern and magnanimous virtues expect at
their hands. After all, let it be remembered we are not saying
there are no objections to the diffusion of knowledge among the
female sex,—we would not hazard such a proposition respecting
anything; but we are saying that upon the whole, it is the best
method of employing time, and that there are fewer objections to
it than to any other method. There are perhaps fifty thousand
females in Great Britain who are exempted by circumstances
from all necessary labor: but every human being must do some-
thing with their existence; and the pursuit of knowledge is, upon
the whole, the most innocent, the most dignified, and the most
useful method of filling up that idleness of which there is al-
ways so large a portion in nations far advanced in civilization.
Let any man reflect, too, upon the solitary situation in which
women are placed; the ill treatment to which they are sometimes
exposed, and which they must endure in silence and without the
power of complaining: and he must feel convinced that the hap-
piness of a woman will be materially increased in proportion as
education has given to her the habit and the means of drawing
her resources from herself.
There are a few common phrases in circulation respecting the
duties of women, to which we wish to pay some degree of atten-
tion, because they are rather inimical to those opinions which we
have advanced on this subject. Indeed, independently of this,
there is nothing which requires more vigilance than the current
phrases of the day; of which there are always some resorted to
in every dispute, and from the sovereign authority of which it is
often vain to make any appeal. "The true theatre for a woman
is the sick-chamber;" "Nothing so honorable to a woman as
not to be spoken of at all. " These two phrases, the delight of
Noodledom, are grown into commonplaces upon the subject; and
are not unfrequently employed to extinguish that love of knowl-
edge in women which, in our humble opinion, it is of so much
importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so ornamental and
delightful in women as the benevolent affections; but time can-
not be filled up, and life employed, with high and impassioned


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13560
SYDNEY SMITH
virtues. Some of these feelings are of rare occurrence, all of
short duration, or nature would sink under them. A scene of
distress and anguish is an occasion where the finest qualities of
the female mind may be displayed; but it is a monstrous ex-
aggeration to tell women that they are born only for scenes of
distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, sister, and brother,
if they want it: it would be a violation of the plainest duties to
neglect them. But when we are talking of the common occupa-
tions of life, do not let us mistake the accidents for the occu-
pations; when we are arguing how the twenty-three hours of
the day are to be filled up, it is idle to tell us of those feel-
ings and agitations above the level of common existence, which
may employ the remaining hour. Compassion, and every other
virtue, are the great objects we all ought to have in view; but
no man (and no woman) can fill up the twenty-four hours by
acts of virtue. But one is a lawyer, and the other a plowman,
and the third a merchant; and then, acts of goodness, and inter-
vals of compassion and fine feeling, are scattered up and down
the common occupations of life. We know women are to be
compassionate; but they cannot be compassionate from eight
o'clock in the morning till twelve at night, and what are they
to do in the interval? This is the only question we have been
putting all along, and is all that can be meant by literary educa-
tion.
One of the greatest pleasures of life is conversation; and the
pleasures of conversation are of course enhanced by every increase
of knowledge: not that we should meet together to talk of alka-
lies and angles, or to add to our stock of history and philology —
though a little of these things is no bad ingredient in conver-
sation; but let the subject be what it may, there is always a
prodigious difference between the conversation of those who
have been well educated and of those who have not enjoyed this
advantage. Education gives fecundity of thought, copiousness of
illustration, quickness, vigor, fancy, words, images, and illustra-
tions; it decorates every common thing, and gives the power of
trifling without being undignified and absurd. The subjects them-
selves may not be wanted, upon which the talents of an edu-
cated man have been exercised; but there is always a demand for
those talents which his education has rendered strong and quick.
Now, really, nothing can be further from our intention than to
say anything rude and unpleasant; but we must be excused for


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SYDNEY SMITH
13561
observing that it is not now a very common thing to be inter-
ested by the variety and extent of female knowledge, but it is a
very common thing to lament that the finest faculties in the
world have been confined to trifles utterly unworthy of their
richness and their strength.
The pursuit of knowledge is the most. innocent and inter-
esting occupation which can be given to the female sex; nor
can there be a better method of checking a spirit of dissipation
than by diffusing a taste for literature. The true way to attack
vice is by setting up something else against it. Give to women,
in early youth, something to acquire, of sufficient interest and
importance to command the application of their mature faculties,
and to excite their perseverance in future life; teach them that
happiness is to be derived from the acquisition of knowledge, as
well as the gratification of vanity; and you will raise up a much
more formidable barrier against dissipation than a host of invect-
ives and exhortations can supply.
It sometimes happens that an unfortunate man gets drunk
with very bad wine, not to gratify his palate but to forget his
cares: he does not set any value on what he receives, but on
account of what it excludes; it keeps out something worse than
itself. Now, though it were denied that the acquisition of serious
knowledge is of itself important to a woman, still it prevents a
taste for silly and pernicious works of imagination; it keeps away
the horrid trash of novels; and in lieu of that eagerness for
emotion and adventure which books of that sort inspire, promotes
a calm and steady temperament of mind.
A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune, may gen-
erally find an excellent companion for all vicissitudes of his life;
but it is not so easy to find a companion for his understanding,
who has similar pursuits with himself, or who can comprehend
the pleasure he derives from them. We really can see no reason
why it should not be otherwise; nor comprehend how the pleas-
ures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the num-
ber of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives.
together take a common interest.
One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the
respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Men
rise in character often as they increase in years: they are vener-
able from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they
can impart; if they outlive their faculties, the mere frame itself


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13562
SYDNEY SMITH
is respected for what it once contained. But women (such is
their unfortunate style of education) hazard everything upon one.
cast of the die: when youth is gone, all is gone. No human
creature gives his admiration for nothing: either the eye must
be charmed or the understanding gratified. A woman must talk
wisely or look well. . Every human being must put up with the
coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the
wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for
decayed accomplishments; no man mourns over the fragments of
a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill,- they
are flowers destined to perish: but the decay of great talents is
always the subject of solemn pity; and even when their last
memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with
pious affection.
There is no connection between the ignorance in which women
are kept, and the preservation of moral and religious principle;
and yet certainly there is, in the minds of some timid and re-
spectable persons, a vague, indefinite dread of knowledge, as if
it were capable of producing these effects. It might almost be
supposed, from the dread which the propagation of knowledge
has excited, that there was some great secret which was to be
kept in impenetrable obscurity; that all moral rules were a spe-
cies of delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the
improvement of the understanding, would be attended with the
most fatal consequences to all, and particularly to women. If
we could possibly understand what these great secrets were, we
might perhaps be disposed to concur in their preservation; but
believing that all the salutary rules which are imposed on women
are the result of true wisdom, and productive of the greatest
happiness, we cannot understand how they are to become less
sensible of this truth in proportion as their power of discovering
truth in general is increased, and the habit of viewing questions.
with accuracy and comprehension established by education. There
are men, indeed, who are always exclaiming against every species
of power, because it is connected with danger: their dread of
abuses is o much stronger than their admiration of uses, that
they would cheerfully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and
printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It
is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render
depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength
of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on


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SYDNEY SMITH
13563
its application. But trust to the natural love of good where there
is no temptation to be bad,-it operates nowhere more forcibly
than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or
friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to
acquire; but giving the power, he gives it with a taste for the
wise and rational exercise of that power: so that an educated
person is not only one with stronger and better faculties than
others, but with a more useful propensity, a disposition better
cultivated, and associations of a higher and more important class.
In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which
we have insisted: Why the disproportion in knowledge between
the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural
talents is so small; or why the understanding of women should
be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of bet-
ter and higher things, we profess ourselves not able to under-
stand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best
cured by making that knowledge more general; and the economy
devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and
inconvenience which proceed from neglecting it. For the care
of children, nature has made a direct and powerful provision;
and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural conse-
quence of that desire to please which is productive of the great-
est part of civilization and refinement, and which rests upon a
foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in
education as we have proposed. If you educate women to attend
to dignified and important subjects, you are multiplying beyond
measure the chances of human improvement, by preparing and
medicating those early impressions which always come from the
mother, and which in a great majority of instances are quite
decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business
of education that women would influence the destiny of man.
If women knew more, men must learn more; for ignorance
would then be shameful, and it would become the fashion to
be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of
national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and
amusement of the world; it increases the pleasures of society,
by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a com-
mon interest; and makes marriage an intercourse of understand-
ing as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance
to the female character. The education of women favors public
morals: it provides for every season of life, as well as for the
―


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13564
SYDNEY SMITH
brightest and the best; and leaves a woman, when she is stricken.
by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of everything
and neglected by all, but with the full power and the splendid
attractions of knowledge,—diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite
literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accom-
plished men.
JOHN BULL'S CHARITY SUBSCRIPTIONS
THE
HE English are a calm, reflecting people; they will give time
and money when they are convinced; but they love dates,
names, and certificates. In the midst of the most heart-
rending narratives, Bull requires the day of the month, the year
of our Lord, the name of the parish, and the countersign of
three or four respectable householders. After these affecting
circumstances, he can no longer hold out; but gives way to the
kindness of his nature-puffs, blubbers, and subscribes.
WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS
"O⁰
UR Wise Ancestors" "The Wisdom of our Ancestors >>>
"The Wisdom of Ages" "Venerable Antiquity". - "Wis-
dom of Old Times. "— This mischievous and absurd fallacy
springs from the grossest perversion of the meaning of words.
Experience is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old have
of course a greater experience than the young; but the question
is, Who are the old? and who are the young? Of individuals
living at the same period, the oldest has of course the greatest
experience; but among generations of men, the reverse of this is
true. Those who come first (our ancestors) are the young people,
and have the least experience. We have added to their experience
the experience of many centuries; and therefore, as far as expe-
rience goes, are wiser and more capable of forming an opinion
than they were. The real feeling should be, not, Can we be so
presumptuous as to put our opinions in opposition to those of our
ancestors? but, Can such young, ignorant, inexperienced persons
as our ancestors necessarily were, be expected to have understood
a subject as well as those who have seen so much more, lived so
much longer, and enjoyed the experience of so many centuries?
-
-


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SYDNEY SMITH
13565
All this cant, then, about our ancestors, is merely an abuse of
words, by transferring phrases true of contemporary men to suc-
ceeding ages.
Whereas (as we have before observed) of living
men the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the most experience; of gen-
erations the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the least experience. Our
ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms; chubby
boys in the time of Edward the First; striplings under Elizabeth;
men in the reign of Queen Anne: and we only are the white-
bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are
prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can.
supply. We are not disputing with our ancestors the palm of
talent, in which they may or may not be our superiors; but the
palm of experience, in which it is utterly impossible they can be
our superiors. And yet, whenever the Chancellor comes forward
to protect some abuse, or to oppose some plan which has the
increase of human happiness for its object, his first appeal is
always to the wisdom of our ancestors; and he himself, and many
noble lords who vote with him, are to this hour persuaded that
all alterations and amendments on their devices are an unblushing
controversy between youthful temerity and mature experience!
and so in truth they are; only that much-loved magistrate mis-
takes the young for the old and the old for the young, and is
guilty of that very sin against experience which he attributes to
the lovers of innovation.
We cannot, of course, be supposed to maintain that our ances-
tors wanted wisdom, or that they were necessarily mistaken in
their institutions, because their means of information were more
limited than ours. But we do confidently maintain, that when
we find it expedient to change anything which our ancestors have
enacted, we are the experienced persons, and not they. The
quantity of talent is always varying in any great nation. To say
that we are more or less able than our ancestors, is an assertion
that requires to be explained. All the able men of all ages, who
have ever lived in England, probably possessed, if taken alto-
gether, more intellect than all the able men now in England
can boast of. But if authority must be resorted to rather than
reason, the question is, What was the wisdom of that single age
which enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of the age
which proposes to alter it? What are the eminent men of one
and the other period? If you say that our ancestors were wiser
than us, mention your date and year. If the splendor of names
is equal, are the circumstances the same? If the circumstances


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13566
SYDNEY SMITH
are the same, we have a superiority of experience, of which the
difference between the two periods is the measure.
It is necessary to insist upon this; for upon sacks of wool,
and on benches forensic, sit grave men, and agricolous persons
in the Commons, crying out, "Ancestors, Ancestors! hodie non!
Saxons, Danes, save us! Fiddlefrig, help us! Howel, Ethel-
wolf, protect us! " Any cover for nonsense-any veil for trash
-any pretext for repelling the innovations of conscience and of
duty!
LATIN VERSES
THA
HAT vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical
learning, there can be no doubt. The advantages which
are derived from classical learning by the English manner
of teaching, involve another and a very different question; and
we will venture to say that there never was a more complete
instance in any country of such extravagant and overacted attach-
ment to any branch of knowledge, as that which obtains in this
country with regard to classical knowledge. A young English-
man goes to school at six or seven years old; and he remains in
a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of
age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learn-
ing Latin and Greek: he has scarcely a notion that there is any
other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with
which he is the most perfectly acquainted are the intrigues of
the heathen gods: with whom Pan slept? - with whom Jupiter?
-whom Apollo ravished? These facts the English youth get
by heart the moment they quit the nursery; and are most sedu-
lously and industriously instructed in them till the best and most
active part of life is passed away. Now, this long career of
classical learning we may, if we please, denominate a foundation;
but it is a foundation so far above-ground, that there is abso-
lutely no room to put anything upon it. If you occupy a man
with one thing till he is twenty-four years of age, you have
exhausted all his leisure time: he is called into the world, and
compelled to act; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks and
reads no more. If you have neglected to put other things in
him, they will never get in afterward; if you have fed him.
only with words, he will remain a narrow and limited being to
the end of his existence.


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13567
The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no
uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their
gray hairs and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for schoolboys.
Their talk is of Latin verses; and it is quite clear, if men's ages
are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that
such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their
minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions
of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great
school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness.
Attend, too, to the public feelings; look to all the terms of
applause. A learned man! a scholar! a man of erudition! Upon
whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they
given to men acquainted with the science of government? thor-
oughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of
Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their
action upon each other? No; this is not learning: it is chem-
istry or political economy-not learning. The distinguishing
abstract term, the epithet of "scholar," is reserved for him who
writes on the Eolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Syl-
burgian method of arranging defectives in and μ. The pict-
ure from which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of
knowledge, draws his beau idéal of human nature-his top and
consummation of man's powers-is a knowledge of the Greek
language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent;
but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imagi-
nary glory which he draws for himself are the detection of an
anapæst in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case
which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti
failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet
the greatest chemist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most
profound political economist, of his time, in company with the
greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between
them ever come across his mind? would he ever dream that
such men as Adam Smith or Lavoisier were equal in dignity of
understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne?
We are inclined to think that the feeling excited would be a
good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the
praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained consider-
able doubt whether the King, with all his victories, knew how to
conjugate a Greek verb in μ.
Another misfortune of classical learning as taught in Eng-
land is, that scholars have come, in process of time and from


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13568
SYDNEY SMITH
the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the
end; not the luxury which the difficulty incloses, but the diffi-
culty; not the filbert, but the shell; not what may be read in
Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has
mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who
displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is
conveyed. The glory is to show I am a scholar.
The good
sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient
authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of
pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something posi
tive; I establish my pretensions to the name of a scholar, and
gain the credit of learning while I sacrifice all its utility.
Another evil in the present system of classical education is
the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those
languages; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought
for in nothing else.